If someone is so depraved that they cannot empathize with someone being tortured, they are too depraved to respond to reason

Credit: Credit: Shrieking Tree / photo on flickrAfter years of struggle with executive branch agencies, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s report on the CIA’s “Detention and Interrogation Program” has been released. Download it here as a PDF and curl up in front of a good fire with some wine. A lot of it.

Obviously there’s going to be a lot to look over for this, and it’s sadly not clear how many people care anymore (I’ve already seen one tweet claiming the release of this report is intended to distract us from Jon Gruber’s testimony today about Obamacare).

Here are just the headlines for the report’s findings (which itself is 19 pages out of the 525 pages:

The CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.

The CIA's justification for the use of its enhanced interrogation techniques rested on inaccurate claims of their effectiveness.

The interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others.

(This is where they document that five detainees were given forced enemas)

The conditions of confinement for CIA detainees were harsher than the CIA had represented to policymakers and others.

The CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information to the Department of Justice, impeding a proper legal analysis of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program.

The CIA has actively avoided or impeded congressional oversight of the program.

The CIA impeded effective White House oversight and decision-making.

President George W. Bush was not fully briefed about specific interrogation methods until 2006.

The CIA's operation and management of the program complicated, and in some cases impeded, the national security missions of other Executive Branch agencies

The CIA impeded oversight by the CIA's Office of Inspector General

The CIA coordinated the release of classified information to the media, including inaccurate information concerning the effectiveness of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques

The CIA was unprepared as it began operating its Detention and Interrogation Program more than six months after being granted detention authorities

The CIA's management and operation of its Detention and Interrogation Program was deeply flawed throughout the program's duration, particularly so in 2002 and early 2003.

Two contract psychologists devised the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques and played a central role in the operation, assessments, and management of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program. By 2005, the CIA had overwhelmingly outsourced operations related to the program

The summary notes the two psychologists had no experience as interrogators.

CIA detainees were subjected to coercive interrogation techniques that had not been approved by the Department of Justice or had not been authorized by CIA Headquarters

Things like forcing them to be naked and slapping them.

The CIA did not conduct a comprehensive or accurate accounting of the number of individuals it detained, and held individuals who did not meet the legal standard for detention. The CIA's claims about the number of detainees held and subjected to its enhanced Interrogation techniques were inaccurate.

The CIA failed to adequately evaluate the effectiveness of its enhanced interrogation techniques.

The CIA rarely reprimanded or held personnel accountable for serious and significant violations, inappropriate activities, and systemic and individual management failures.

In several cases no disciplinary actions were called for even when detainees died. In one case of an improper detention, no discipline happened because “[t]he Director strongly believes that mistakes should be expected in a business filled with uncertainty."

The CIA marginalized and ignored numerous internal critiques, criticisms, and objections concerning the operation and management of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program

The CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program was inherently unsustainable and had effectively ended by 2006 due to unauthorized press disclosures, reduced cooperation from other nations, and legal and oversight concerns.

The CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program damaged the United States' standing in the world, and resulted in other significant monetary and non-monetary costs.

That’s just headlines, folks! That’s a lot to chew over. In the meantime. Here is President Barack Obama’s statement of response to the report’s release:

Throughout our history, the United States of America has done more than any other nation to stand up for freedom, democracy, and the inherent dignity and human rights of people around the world. As Americans, we owe a profound debt of gratitude to our fellow citizens who serve to keep us safe, among them the dedicated men and women of our intelligence community, including the Central Intelligence Agency. Since the horrific attacks of 9/11, these public servants have worked tirelessly to devastate core al Qaeda, deliver justice to Osama bin Laden, disrupt terrorist operations and thwart terrorist attacks. Solemn rows of stars on the Memorial Wall at the CIA honor those who have given their lives to protect ours. Our intelligence professionals are patriots, and we are safer because of their heroic service and sacrifices.

In the years after 9/11, with legitimate fears of further attacks and with the responsibility to prevent more catastrophic loss of life, the previous administration faced agonizing choices about how to pursue al Qaeda and prevent additional terrorist attacks against our country. As I have said before, our nation did many things right in those difficult years. At the same time, some of the actions that were taken were contrary to our values. That is why I unequivocally banned torture when I took office, because one of our most effective tools in fighting terrorism and keeping Americans safe is staying true to our ideals at home and abroad.

Today’s report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence details one element of our nation’s response to 9/11—the CIA’s detention and interrogation program, which I formally ended on one of my first days in office. The report documents a troubling program involving enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects in secret facilities outside the United States, and it reinforces my long-held view that these harsh methods were not only inconsistent with our values as nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests. Moreover, these techniques did significant damage to America’s standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners. That is why I will continue to use my authority as President to make sure we never resort to those methods again.

As Commander in Chief, I have no greater responsibility than the safety and security of the American people. We will therefore continue to be relentless in our fight against al Qaeda, its affiliates and other violent extremists. We will rely on all elements of our national power, including the power and example of our founding ideals. That is why I have consistently supported the declassification of today’s report. No nation is perfect. But one of the strengths that makes America exceptional is our willingness to openly confront our past, face our imperfections, make changes and do better. Rather than another reason to refight old arguments, I hope that today’s report can help us leave these techniques where they belong—in the past. Today is also a reminder that upholding the values we profess doesn’t make us weaker, it makes us stronger and that the United States of America will remain the greatest force for freedom and human dignity that the world has ever known.

And here’s a partial response from CIA Director John Brennan (oddly, this press release is not yet showing up on the CIA site)

As noted in CIA’s response to the study, we acknowledge that the detention and interrogation program had shortcomings and that the Agency made mistakes. The most serious problems occurred early on and stemmed from the fact that the Agency was unprepared and lacked the core competencies required to carry out an unprecedented, worldwide program of detaining and interrogating suspected al-Qa’ida and affiliated terrorists. In carrying out that program, we did not always live up to the high standards that we set for ourselves and that the American people expect of us. As an Agency, we have learned from these mistakes, which is why my predecessors and I have implemented various remedial measures over the years to address institutional deficiencies.

Yet, despite common ground with some of the findings of the Committee’s Study, we part ways with the Committee on some key points. Our review indicates that interrogations of detainees on whom EITs were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives. The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of al-Qa’ida and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day.

We also disagree with the Study’s characterization of how CIA briefed the program to the Congress, various entities within the Executive Branch, and the public. While we made mistakes, the record does not support the Study’s inference that the Agency systematically and intentionally misled each of these audiences on the effectiveness of the program. Moreover, the process undertaken by the Committee when investigating the program provided an incomplete and selective picture of what occurred. As noted in the Minority views and in a number of additional views of Members, no interviews were conducted of any CIA officers involved in the program, which would have provided Members with valuable context and perspective surrounding these events.

Throughout its 67-year history, CIA has played a critical role keeping our Nation secure, and CIA officers are rightly proud and honored to be part of an organization that is indispensable to our national security. The numerous challenges on the world stage demand the full attention, focus, and capabilities of the women and men of the CIA so that our country can stay strong and our fellow Americans remain safe. To be successful, the CIA needs to work closely with its Congressional oversight committees as we confront these challenges. With today’s release of Committee documents and the CIA response, we look forward to the way ahead.

Shackford comes to Reason after nearly a decade of serving in various editing positions for Freedom Communications, a libertarian-leaning media chain that may or may not still exist depending on when this profile is being read. Prior to moving to Reason, he was editor in chief of the Desert Dispatch in Barstow, California, where he wrote editorials focusing on libertarian issues like wasteful municipal spending, school choice, the drug war and abuse of police authority. He also editorialized about state and federal transportation and energy spending. Living in the midst of heavily subsidized solar developments in the Mojave Desert, he warned about potential problems with the Department of Energy’s guaranteed loan program months before Solyndra actually filed for bankruptcy. He was one of the few newspaper editors in California to endorse Proposition 19 to legalize marijuana.

Before becoming part of the massive libertarian media establishment, Shackford once weighed in on much more important matters as a show recapper at Television Without Pity. There, his dislike of Clay Aiken and his disappointment with the writing on Firefly earned him the enmity of the entire Internet. All of it.

The Senate Intelligence investigators never spoke to us—the leaders of the agency whose policies they are now assailing for partisan reasons.

Updated Dec. 9, 2014 6:51 p.m. ET313 COMMENTS

The Senate Intelligence Committee has released its majority report on Central Intelligence Agency detention and interrogation in the wake of 9/11. The following response is from former CIA Directors George J. Tenet, Porter J. Goss and Michael V. Hayden (a retired Air Force general), and former CIA Deputy Directors John E. McLaughlin, Albert M. Calland (a retired Navy vice admiral) and Stephen R. Kappes :

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on Central Intelligence Agency detention and interrogation of terrorists, prepared only by the Democratic majority staff, is a missed opportunity to deliver a serious and balanced study of an important public policy question. The committee has given us instead a one-sided study marred by errors of fact and interpretation—essentially a poorly done and partisan attack on the agency that has done the most to protect America after the 9/11 attacks.

Examining how the CIA handled these matters is an important subject of continuing relevance to a nation still at war. In no way would we claim that we did everything perfectly, especially in the emergency and often-chaotic circumstances we confronted in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. As in all wars, there were undoubtedly things in our program that should not have happened. When we learned of them, we reported such instances to the CIA inspector general or the Justice Department and sought to take corrective action.

The country and the CIA would have benefited from a more balanced study of these programs and a corresponding set of recommendations. The committee’s report is not that study. It offers not a single recommendation.

Our view on this is shared by the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Republican minority, both of which are releasing rebuttals to the majority’s report. Both critiques are clear-eyed, fact-based assessments that challenge the majority’s contentions in a nonpartisan way.

What is wrong with the committee’s report?Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, shown in an undated photo from the FBI. ENLARGEKhalid Sheikh Muhammed, shown in an undated photo from the FBI. Associated Press

First, its claim that the CIA’s interrogation program was ineffective in producing intelligence that helped us disrupt, capture, or kill terrorists is just not accurate. The program was invaluable in three critical ways:

• It led to the capture of senior al Qaeda operatives, thereby removing them from the battlefield.

• It led to the disruption of terrorist plots and prevented mass casualty attacks, saving American and Allied lives.

• It added enormously to what we knew about al Qaeda as an organization and therefore informed our approaches on how best to attack, thwart and degrade it...............

http://www.wsj.com/articles/cia-interrogations-saved-lives-1418142644

The whole discussion is facile if conducted in a 'yes' or 'no' manner.

It's a situation ripe for the use of that difficult study known as 'situational ethics'.

The ticking nuclear bomb scenario, the imminent gas attack on the subway......the saving of a multitude of lives....

People are going to disagree as to what is the proper moral/ethical posture in many situations.

CIA Director John Brennan testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 29, 2014, before the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on current and projected national security threats against the U.S. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)By Juliet Eilperin December 9 at 1:00 PM

CIA Director John Brennan on Monday rebutted two of the central premises of the just-released Senate report on the agency’s former practice of interrogating suspected terrorists in secret, saying the controversial program produced evidence that helped avert potential strikes against the U.S. and that agency officials did not intentionally mislead Congress about its tactics.

“Our review indicates that interrogations of detainees on whom [enhanced interrogation techniques] were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives,” Brennan said in the statement. “The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of al-Qa’ida and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day.”

As evidence of how the program contributed to the government’s broader effort to fight terrorism, a CIA fact sheet released along with Brennan’s statement cited the case of Ammar al-Baluchi, who was subjected to the severe tactics and was the first detainee to reveal that Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti worked as a courier to convey messages for Osama bin Laden after the late al-Qaeda leader left Afghanistan.

The fact sheet stated that the agency “takes no position” on whether the intelligence information gained through its enhanced interrogation techniques “could have been obtained through other means or from other individuals. The answer to this question is, and will remain, unknowable.”

Six Republican members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released their own minority report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation programs, condemning Democrats for costing the government $40 million and diverting “countless CIA analytic and support resources” while failing to offer improved intelligence interrogation tactics...........

On one side we have the Senate Majority Report on the CIA intelligence practices (i.e. torture) which came to the same conclusion as the modified CIA manual on the subject back in the 80's,

“The use of force, mental torture, threats, insults, or exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of anykind as an aid to interrogation is prohibited by law, both international and domestic; it isneither authorized nor condoned” and that force in interrogations was considered “a poortechnique” that “yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, andcan induce the source to say what he thinks the interrogator wants to hear” (CIA 1983: 5)

On the other we have

The neocon nutjobs and the liberal interventionists that got us into the WOT and all it entails.

CIA Director Brennan, a patriot who lied in testimony to Congress.

DNI Clapper, a patriot who also lied to Congress.

The CIA contractors they hired to develop and run the program.

The CIA who hacked into the computers of the Intelligence Committee and stole sections of the report.

>>>Feinstein is also pursuing personal revenge against CIA. Allegedly, the agency spied on her committee and walked off with documents. This followed the CIA humiliating Feinstein after she tried to salvage her good liberal credentials by stating publicly that she and her committee were unaware that the CIA used “enhanced interrogation” (such as waterboarding). The CIA responded with evidence that she not only knew of the technique, but tacitly approved. Feinstein has responded with her weighty tome and the tactic the left embraces if a fight comes along: stain and discredit your foe with unsubstantiated accusations and innuendo.

The entire drama is infantile...<<<

Much like Quirk Quazzy and his high dudgeon and mighty moral drama.

December 10, 2014Feinstein's Last Stand Targets CIABy Bernie Reeves

>>>General Michael Hayden, the only person to serve as chief of the National Security Agency (1999-2005) and as director of the CIA (2006-2009), was the keynote speaker at my Raleigh Spy Conference in 2011. Hayden refused to terminate listening to terrorist chatter abroad at the NSA and kept up enhanced interrogation at the CIA when Feinstein lied and said she did not know that waterboarding was used. He said the success of the bin Laden raid was based on information extracted by enhanced interrogation.

The president has backed Muslim Brotherhood (MB) policy objectives in the Middle East and North Africa every step of the way. Generally, the MB has sought to depose or dispatch leaders in the Ummah who are seen as “Westernized” MINOs (Muslims in name only) and thereby slander the legacy of the Prophet of Islam.

Libya

The MB had been trying to oust Gaddafi for over 20 years. He was seen as too secular and not a true follower of Islam. In effect, by his words and deeds, Gaddafi slandered the Prophet of Islam. As a 2011 CNN article notes:

While jihadists launched a brief but unsuccessful campaign to overthrow Gadhafi in the 1990s, the Brotherhood focused much of its efforts on clandestine preaching and social welfare efforts in Libya.

[snip]

In February [2011], as protests in Libya began, Yusuf al Qaradawi -- an Egyptian preacher in Qatar widely viewed as the Muslim Brotherhood's chief spiritual guide -- issued a fatwa or religious ruling obliging any Libyan soldier who had the opportunity to do so to assassinate the leader.

In 2011 the Obama team got its chance for regime change with a “humanitarian intervention” to replace Gaddafi with a “moderate” MB-backed candidate. But it has been argued by Maximillian Forte in his 2012 book on NATO’s war on Libya, that the charges against Gaddafi were largely bogus:

Forte shows that the factual base for Gaddafi’s alleged threat to civilians, his treatment of protesters in mid-February 2011, was more than dubious. The claimed striking at protesters by aerial attacks, and the rape surge, were straightforward disinformation, and the number killed was small -- 24 protesters in the three days, February 15-17, according to Human Rights Watch – fewer than the number of alleged “black mercenaries” executed by the rebels in Derna in mid-February (50), and fewer than the early protester deaths in Tunis or Egypt that elicited no Security Council effort to “protect civilians.” There were claims of several thousand killed in February 2011, but Forte shows that this also was disinformation supplied by the rebels and their allies, but swallowed by many Western officials, media and other gullibles. That the actual evidence would induce the urgent and massive response by the NATO powers is implausible, and the rush to arms demands a different rationale than protecting civilians in a small North African state. Forte provides it, compellingly -- Obama and company were seizing the “window of opportunity” for regime change.

When Al-Maliki backed Assad in Syria against MB efforts to overthrow Assad and install a true Islamic leader he became an MB target. By backing the secular Assad, Al-Malaki became a traitor to Islam and had slandered the legacy of Prophet of Islam.

Al-Maliki, whom Bush had designated as “our guy” in Baghdad when his administration facilitated his premiership in 2006, did have a “cordial” relationship with the Obama administration until his support of the Assad regime against the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) which was backed by the MB.

As Secretary of State John Kerry stated in 2013:

“I made it very clear that for those of us who are engaged in an effort to see President Assad step down and to see a democratic process take hold… anything that supports President Assad is problematic,” Kerry said at a news conference at the US Embassy in Baghdad after meeting separately with Maliki at his office. “And I made it very clear to the Prime Minister that the overflights from Iran are, in fact, helping to sustain President Assad and his regime.”

Indeed, it could even be argued that the Obama team was played in their support for the FSA against Assad as the FSA was a “fictional” front created by the MB and Al Qaeda for the purpose of gaining U.S. military aid:

The Free Syrian Army never existed. What did exist was neither free, nor Syrian, nor an army. The FSA was sold as an army of Syrian soldiers who had banded together under defecting officers to fight against the Assad government. The real FSA mostly consisted of Islamic brigades, indistinguishable for the most part from the other Salafist brigades in the war. Some of these brigades were affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood whose local allies, Turkey and Qatar, were the war’s biggest backers.

Be that as it may, the bottom line is that the MB backed the overthrow of the Assad regime and when Maliki failed to get in line he had to go.

Even MSM couldn’t duck this story. Basically, just as in the case of Libya, the MB had been militating against Mubarak from the get go inasmuch as he was seen as another MINO, too secular and untrue to the Islamic legacy. Mubarak, on his part, kept them in check by brutal crackdowns. Once the MB in the Obama administration had Obama’s backing, Mubarak’s days were numbered. Out with Mubarak, in with the MB candidate Morsi. The final Egyptian response says it all. The Morsi regime was overthrown. Obama was accused of being a shill for the MB. MB was declared a terrorist organization and now Mubarak has been pardoned.

The MB was totally against the un-Islamic westernized Green Revolution which threatened to topple the Khamenei regime.

‘Tragic’ is the best word for the Obama administration’s failure to support the Green Revolution. In fact the Obama administration supported the hardline Muslim regime of Khamenei during the protests which, according to some reports, might have toppled the Mullah theo-fascist regime. Thomas Freidman’s lament In the NYT regarding Morsi’s legitimization of the Khamenei regime in 2012 says it all.

In 2009, this Iranian regime literally killed the Green Revolution. It gunned down hundreds and jailed thousands of Iranians who wanted the one thing that Egyptians got: to have their votes counted honestly and the results respected. Morsi, who was brought to power by a courageous democracy revolution that neither he nor his Muslim Brotherhood party started — but who benefited from the free and fair election that followed — is lending his legitimacy to an Iranian regime that brutally crushed just such a movement in Tehran. This does not augur well for Morsi’s presidency. In fact, he should be ashamed of himself.

Collaboration? Cahoots? Crypto MB? “What difference does it make?” The Obama administration’s “meddling” (the accusation leveled at Bush and Western involvement in the Ummah in general) in concert with the MB has been a flop and worse -- unless keeping Khamenei in power is construed as a success, along with replacing Gaddafi with chaos is a success and replacing Maliki while allowing the ISIS “junior varsity” to go pro is a success. And that is just the meddling part. Given a choice between theo-fascist Mullahs and their puppets as opposed to more secular, democratic-leaning political movements, the MB and the Obama administration have gone with the former -- under the pretense of “not meddling”!

All of the above is quite in accord with the MB motto:

"Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest aspiration."

By the way, the mighty moral theorist Dianne Feinstein was, like Deuce, for torture before she was against torture.

Jeez, Bob, at least try to keep up. Feinstein has been, throughout her career, one of the biggest supporters of the intelligence services. She usually takes their words in and spits them out verbatim. I spent frustrating hours listening to her and her counterpart in the House, Mike Rogers, trying to defend the NSA during their recent scandals.

However, it's easy to see that the lady might be a little pissed when she finds the organization she has been defending all these years is hacking in to her committee's computer and stealing files. The when Brennen comes before her committee he lies about it and keeps on lying until he is found out. Yes, the release was probably rather personal with her.

And yes, the Report was released now because the Dems knew that if it wasn't released now in the lame duck session it would never be released. And likely, though Obama said he was glad it was released, it's unlikely he was because of what it might possibly mean for him once the GOP takes over. Thus the Kerry appeal to hold off on releasing it. So yes, there was undoubtedly a political aspect to the release.

So fucking what?

The report is what it is and only an an amoral sociopath would try to justify would try to justify the CIA actions taken in the name of the good ol USA.

The DOJ reports to the president. He can get the DOJ to sign off on anything he wants. You can stretch logic and the law as far as you want if you are paid enough. Words on a page don't make things right.

What would you do, Quirk, if ISIS captured 600 Christian girls, whereabouts unknown, and pledged to execute them - and by now we know enough to take them at their word - on X date with their cameras rolling to preserve the event for posterity, and you had one ISIS guy that knows the whereabouts, and you want to try and rescue them, and he isn't talking.

I'm certain I could find, and not just a few, Catholic priests and nuns around the world, in addition to a massive number of Catholic pew sitters, who would opt for a little water up this asshole's nose.

That boat has of course long sailed and will never return. “Palestine” is a lost issue once and for all, because the Palestinian Arab leadership is utterly incapable of reconciling itself or its people to living in peace with its Jewish neighbor. “Palestine” is an expansionist, racist, violence-ridden Nazi entity in every sense of the word. Probably the only thing that rival gangs Fatah and Hamas agree on is their vision of “Palestine” as judenrein, conquering and totally encompassing all of Israel. Want proof? Here are the official logos of Fatah and Hamas (just to drive home the point, the Hamas logo also depicts the swords that will be used to rid the land of Jews). Just look at these maps of “Palestine”. Now point out where UN member state Israel fits in on those maps…

Former Nebraska Senator and member of the Intelligence Committee Bob Kerrey wrote an op ed in USA Today, bemoaning the partisan nature of the torture report, and calling on the intel committee to offer recommendations for reform.

I will wait until I have fully read and considered Tuesday's report to enter the debate over whether the CIA handled interrogation of detainees in an appropriate manner. Thanks to the 2005 and 2006 efforts of Senator John McCain I do not have to wait to be certain our interrogation policies and procedures are aligned with our core values.

I also do not have to wait to know we are fighting a war that is different than any in our country's past. The enemy does not have an easy to identify and analyze military. In the war against global jihadism, human intelligence and interrogation have become more important, and I worry that the partisan nature of this report could make this kind of collection more difficult.

I do not need to read the report to know that the Democratic staff alone wrote it. The Republicans checked out early when they determined that their counterparts started out with the premise that the CIA was guilty and then worked to prove it.

It is important for all of us to not let Congress dodge responsibility. Congressional oversight of intelligence is notoriously weak. The 9/11 Commission recommended a number of changes in the authorities of Congressional committees but the proposal – advanced by Senator McCain – did not come close to gathering a majority of votes in either the Senate or the House.

The worse consequence of a partisan report can be seen in this disturbing fact: It contains no recommendations. This is perhaps the most significant missed opportunity, because no one would claim the program was perfect or without its problems. But equally, no one with real experience would claim it was the completely ineffective and superfluous effort this report alleges.

Our intelligence personnel – who are once again on the front lines fighting the Islamic State – need recommended guidance from their board of governors: The U.S. Congress. Remarkably this report contains none. I hope – for the sake of our security and our values – Congress will follow the leadership of Senator McCain and give them this guidance.

Early on, it became apparent that the Democrats on the committee were more interested in blaming the Bush administration than in actually finding out what went on. Neither did the Democrats realistically assess the results of the enhanced interrogation techniques. The broad, sweeping generalizations in their conclusions along with the lack of recommendations is what Senator Kerrey is complaining about.

A political report was inevitable, given the state of politics today. But it is significant that Republicans on the committee didn't even write a dissent. They wanted no part in a partisan effort to heap blame on the Bush administration for their policies.

While there are plenty of Bible verses to mention while discussing immigration, President Obama on Tuesday quoted one which isn't so great, mainly because it's not real. "The good book says don't throw stones at glass houses, or make sure we're looking at the log in our eye before we are pointing out the moat in other folks eyes," Obama said during a speech in Nashville. One problem, though: The Bible never mentions glass houses.

In addition to his biblical misquote, Obama also tied his immigration policy to the Christmas story, saying, "If we're serious about the Christmas season, now is the time to reflect on those who are strangers in our midst and remember what it was like to be a stranger." This analogy drew conservative ire as opponents of the president's immigration reform noted that Mary and Joseph were actually visiting Joseph's ancestral home. Watch Obama's comments in the video below. --Bonnie Kristian

Valerie Jarrett really has to crack down on President Obama going off-teleprompter. Ever. Speaking in Tennessee yesterday, a state where many people actually read the Bible, the smartest president ever mistakenly attributed an aphorism rooted in Chaucer to the Bible. Charlie Spiering of Breitbart noticed:

I think the good book says, you know, ‘Don’t throw stones in glass houses,’ or make sure that we’re lookin’ at the log in our eye, before we’re pulling out the mote in other folk’s eyes,” he said. “I think that’s as true in politics as it is in life.

Here is the video:

The president also entirely fatuously linked illegal immigration to the Christmas story of no room at the inn for Joseph and Mary (who were Roman subjects, after all, not aliens):

“If we’re serious about the Christmas season, now is the time to reflect on those who are strangers in our midst and remember what it was like to be a stranger,” Obama said during an immigration town hall in Nashville.

Obama reminded them that the Christmas season was about a “soon to be mother” and “a husband of modest means” who were looking for a place to stay, but there was no room at the inn.

“As I said the day that I announced these executive actions that we were once strangers too, and part of what my faith teaches me is to look upon the stranger as part of myself,” he said. “And during this Christmas season that’s a good place to start.”

I would restate that as: “If we’re serious about discussing illegal aliens and the Bible, we should actually know what we are talking about.”

In March 2013, rebels surrounded the Syrian army around Raqqa. From inside the city, residents pleaded with the rebels not to attack. While many citizens sympathized with the rebel cause, Raqqa was already full of refugees from other war-torn parts of Syria. They had finally found refuge and begged for their relative peace not to be disturbed yet again. The rebels did not listen, and after a quick assault, Raqqa became the first large city to fall under the full control of the forces in opposition to Bashar al Assad.

That was almost two years ago. At the beginning of 2014, infighting broke out among rebels in the area, and the so-called Islamic State emerged victorious. Today, Raqqa is often referred to as their administrative capital. Those pleas issued by ordinary citizens two years ago might give us a small insight into the situation that paved the way for the Islamic State's formal entrance into the Syrian conflict.

While conducting interviews for a documentary about Syria, I met a young former fighter who had left the Free Syrian Army due to their conduct in Raqqa. The fighter had joined the Free Syrian Army because he believed that overthrowing Assad is a fundamental necessity. However, he decided to flee after Raqqa fell and he saw fighters loot people's homes and steal their belongings. The rebels' behaviour outraged him. He had joined a fight against injustice. Every piece of land liberated by the FSA, he believed, should become the complete opposite of Syria under Assad: no arbitrary detentions, no excessive force against dissidents, and no sectarianism. He had not joined the Free Syrian Army to become a thug.

The Islamic State winning hearts and minds

During the last year, the Islamic State has rampaged throughout Iraq and Syria. Only once they drew near Erbil and Baghdad did the United States move to roll them back, often with the help of uncomfortable allies such as the Hadi al-Amiri, the leader of the Iraqi Badr Brigades. In effect, the United States and Iran have the same allies on the ground in Iraq - a drastic turn in policy that underlines how seriously Washington and Tehran see the threat from the Islamic State.

The military advances of the Islamic State, and their brutality, have been well documented by journalists and analysts. However, their successes are not only due to military prowess - equally important is their ability to provide a sense of safety and normality to their subjects. How do they administer the areas they control? What services to they provide?

Any strategy to erase the Islamic State from the region clearly requires a decisive military component. But also crucial is a recognition that soft power is paramount to the Islamic State's success. If the group is to be permanently dislodged, its opponents need to administer the areas in a better fashion than the Islamic State and gain the support of the local population.

The Islamic State does several things to raise public support. They administer relief aid for the most needy citizens, often filming the actions for online advertising. The Islamic State has also contracted engineers to repair or even build new bridges across the Euphrates. A contact currently based in Raqqa, who wishes to remain anonymous, also told me the group has employed former Syrian state employees to work on restoring water supplies.

After having "revised" the traditional Syrian school curriculum to fit their moral views, the Islamic State began last year to open schools for children living in the areas under ISIS control. These schools indoctrinate students from a very early age, and they also provide military training. This should be particularly frightening for Western policy makers. But in a devastated country where schooling had been unavailable in opposition areas for three years, parents welcome the Islamic State's efforts to teach their children how to read and write.

The organization's sale of oil to mainly Turkish dealers has received much media scrutiny. But the Islamic State also sells its oil at subsidized rates to the population under its control. Again, such public policy is something quickly turns local public opinion.

The final aspect of the group's soft power is perhaps the most important. The Islamic State has two types of legal system. The first applies to enemy combatants. These fighters are not tried in courts and are often summarily and brutally executed. For citizens, however, there are courts administered under rule of law. While legal systems exist in other opposition-controlled areas, the Islamic State's courts are the most transparent and fair. If you break the law you will be harshly punished; if you do not, you are fine. Having lived for three years under near-total anarchy in the north and east of Syria, residents welcome Islamic State efforts.

U.S. President Barack Obama has so far seen Iraq as the main battlefront against the Islamic State, reasoning that the Iraqi government and the Kurds can supply foot soldiers that can engage the enemy. As a short-term approach this seems reasonable, but in the long run it will not succeed. Part of the reason for the Islamic State's success is that the group is seen by alienated Sunni civilians as the lesser of two evils. The Iraqi army, composed mainly of Shiites transported from the south of the country to patrol Sunni cities in the north, are seen as extending the reach of Baghdad's sectarian policies.

Yet the current anti-ISIS strategy relies on, well, sending Shiites to patrol Sunni streets. If Washington hopes to slowly gain the approval of Sunni tribal allies, this doesn't seem a hopeful strategy. The tribes that largely routed Islamic State's predecessor, al Qaeda in Iraq, are not likely to take up arms against the Islamic State in the absence of a neutral force such as the American army. If the tribes ally with Baghdad, they know they are welcoming ruthless Shiite militias into their homes. The Islamic State has also learned from the Anbar Awakening in 2005 and has set in motion a strategy to pre-empt tribal insurrection. For the last few years they have carried out targeted assassinations of key tribal leaders, often filming their drive-by shootings and posting them online. This long-term strategy has been largely ignored by the media.

I have previously on these pages argued for the establishment of a strategy to form a more coherent Syrian opposition. This strategy should be coupled with an effort to form some sense of normality in the areas controlled by the opposition. Obama has described the rebels as being "made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth." In fact, Syrian rebels do need exactly those types of people, perhaps not as fighters, but to provide services. Brutal as he may be, the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, seems to possess a better understanding of how to win hearts and minds in the war-torn territories than does Obama. In an audio statement released in July, Baghdadi urged supporters to emigrate to ISIS-controlled areas, saying: "We make a special call to the scholars, fuqahā' (experts in Islamic jurisprudence), and callers, especially the judges, as well as people with military, administrative, and service expertise, and medical doctors and engineers of all different specialisations and fields." Baghdadi understands that in order to win the war, he needs hard military power, but he also needs doctors, farmers, and administrators.

In the search for long-term solutions, the Syrian rebels seem to be best positioned to drive back the Islamic State. A coherent Syrian force can take back Der-er-Zor and Raqqa without being seen as occupiers. No other regional actor is in such a favorable position. To rely on Iraqi Kurds and Shiites would be to repeat the same mistake and expect a different result: the definition of insanity. If Syrian rebels become a more coherent fighting force, and if they are trained in how to administer the areas they occupy, we might start seeing a serious rollback of the Islamic State. If this aspect of the conflict is not recognized, then the Islamic State's grip on large parts of Syria is more likely to endure.

I have not yet even said what my own ideas on the subject may be. Just widening the discussion.

Please, must you embarrass yourself further.

...and you had one ISIS guy that knows the whereabouts, and you want to try and rescue them, and he isn't talking.

How, do you know this guy knows the whereabouts. Did he tell you? Did you get it from some other guy? Was he tortured?

The use of force, mental torture, threats, insults, or exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of anykind as an aid to interrogation is prohibited by law, both international and domestic; it isneither authorized nor condoned”“ and that force in interrogations was considered “a poortechnique” that “yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, andcan induce the source to say what he thinks the interrogator wants to hear” (CIA 1983: 5)

That wasn't from the Senate report it was from CIA and their Inspector General report back in the 80's and it referred to the rampant torture we practiced in Central and South America back then.

We are not talking some Jack Bauer movie where you can write in any ending you want. Didn't you read that article I put up on your buddy Hayden. Of the captives the CIA scooped up, nearly 30 of them were innocent and I use that word advisedly. Regardless, there was not a single charge they could bring against them; yet, they still held them without charge for years.

But back to your question. My answer is no, of course not. I don't deal in hypotheticals dreamed up by some torture apologist.

But since you like hypotheticals let me reverse this. My question is what would YOU do?

Hey, you come into the room. Here is some muzzie as you like to say, tied to a table. You might know who the guy is but you don't know what he has done if anything at all. You don't know what he knows or if he knows anything at all but you are determined to find out. He's tied down so there is nothing he can do to you, besides you have another guy there to help you. The other guy already has the hose in his hand so that leaves it up to you to hold the towel over his face and hold it in position as he struggles. Let's get started. You put the towel over the guys face and you can see it moving in and out as he gasps in anticipation. The guys heart is pumping. Then the water starts covering his face. Now he is really struggling and he keeps on struggling. You turn to guy holding the hose and ask, "How about that Seahawks game?" He says, "Gee, I missed it. Had to go to my kids soccer game. How did the Vandals do?" Then you notices the guys on the table has involuntary spasms in his legs and other extremities. You buddy goes over and turns off the hose. You elevate the 'terrorist' so that the water drains down his throat and airways allowing him to breath. Then you lay him back down, put the towels over his face, and ask him a question. He answers, "I don't know. This is all a mistake." You can hear him sobbing under the towel. Your buddy turns on the water. Your arms are a little tired from holding the guy down but it's wash, rinse, repeat, literally. You've got a busy day. After all, they did this to KSM 183 times in a month. And that was how many times he was put on the table not necessarily how many times he was water boarded.

What would you do?

Should I describe what the guy on the table was going through? Naw, lets make it a little more personal.

You walk into the room and a guy is chained to the wall in a stress position. He's nearly naked and it is cold. Maybe he has a mask on so you don't have to look at him when you 'encourage' him to speak. You've got gloves on so that you don't bruise or cut your hands. You know what you have to do. But this isn't like a bar fight where you get a little boozed up and get into a fight over some girl. It's not like any kind of a fire fight where the adrenaline is flowing and its your life or his. Naw, this is cold-blooded and premeditated. Do you hesitate, Bob, or do you just go over and start pounding on the guy like the piece of raw meat he is. I mean he has a mask on. You don't even have to look at his face. What do YOU do, Bob?

Or maybe, being a newbie at this they merely put you in charge of rectal feeding and save the good stuff for after you are promoted.

So tell us, what do you do, Bob.

Or, do you just contract the job out to some nutjob psychiatrist or to some country where they don't have the Seahawks to watch so this is how they get their jollies on a Friday night.

" You might know who the guy is but you don't know what he has done if anything at all. You don't know what he knows or if he knows anything at all.........'

At that point Quirk, I would turn him over to you.

But in the case I hypothesized, we know he knows where they are holding the abducted girls because our guy is the brother of the chief abductor and we know they were nine phone calls between the two on the day after the abductions.

Now, again, O Mighty Moral One, what would YOU do?

Call Judge Judy?

Boko Haram (books are haram, not allowed, bad) in Nigeria kidnapped three hundred or so young girls, some were sold into sex slavery to the highest bidder, some converted, and were forced to marry the highest bidder, and some were beheaded.

Now we have this Boko dude here that we have excellent cause to believe that he knows where they are being held because he was talking on his cell phone with his bro, one of the abductors, nine times on the day after the abductions.

Bullshit. The question is what would you do given the scenario you put up. My questions were just for clarification.

But in the case I hypothesized, we know he knows where they are holding the abducted girls because our guy is the brother of the chief abductor and we know they were nine phone calls between the two on the day after the abductions.

Will Islamic State wring its hands like us over torture? Not likelyCIA Torture ReportKidnappingIslamic StateTerrorismAl-QaedaDianne Feinstein

Will Islamic State wring its hands like us over torture? Not likelyJohn KassChicago Tribunejskass​@chicagotribune.comJohn_KassIllinois Sen. Mark Kirk on @KassCohn condemns Democrats for CIA torture report says it threatens troops http://t.co/5VGc0q6yR5 @wlsam890Peter Kassig

Kass: U.S. torture report elicits guilt, but the Islamic State isn't squeamish about such things.

The Islamic State doesn't appear ready to follow our lead, so don't expect it to release its report on the morality of severing American heads any time soon.

Though they call themselves a state, they're actually a mob of terrorists in Iraq and Syria. And when they're not severing the heads of Westerners and Syrian soldiers and putting the hideous acts on video, they're raping women or shooting Christians and others and pushing them into ditches.Peter Kassig, Indiana man beheaded by Islamic State, remembered in Muslim prayer servicePeter Kassig, Indiana man beheaded by Islamic State, remembered in Muslim prayer serviceSusan Guyett

But apparently they don't feel guilt, not the way American politicians feel it in Washington. Or at least the Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence feel guilty enough to have released a report condemning the CIA for torturing suspects in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed thousands of Americans.

I'm certainly not advocating torture. It's cruel, it's brutalizing — not only to the victims, obviously, but it also brutalizes the culture that supports such acts. But it might be useful to realize that while we might feel queasy about what we did, the Islamic State is immune from hand-wringing after they cut American throats.

The recent murder of Peter Kassig, an American, was particularly brutal. Kidnapped, held hostage for months, he converted to Islam. Later, his head was cut from his body in an act broadcast last month on video. President Barack Obama called it an act of "pure evil."lRelated Feinstein: CIA report 'Ugly Truth' we must face

Nation & World Feinstein: CIA report 'Ugly Truth' we must face

See all related8

I don't know how many of you have watched those videos. I haven't. I've seen one, years ago, the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, and that was enough. A friend who'd spent time in the special forces told me it was important to watch it, in order to fully comprehend the cruelty of al-Qaida. He was right. There are ways to talk about such things and maintain distance. But seeing it is another matter. There is nothing abstract about the knife and the throat.

Pearl had been kidnapped in Pakistan and decapitated by al-Qaida. We watched the video, and I still remember that sound. It was years ago, but that sound I can't shake. So I've never watched anything like that again.

But the Islamic State isn't squeamish about such things. The United Nations says the group is responsible for the deaths of more than 9,000 people. And still no internal report from them discussing the morality of cutting off the heads of those they consider the enemy.

Yet we feel guilt, plenty of it, and spread it with shovels this week in Washington, and spread it some more, with plenty of hand-wringing and finger-pointing.

Democrats in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released their report — six years in the making — which details CIA torture of suspects in the aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., when thousands were killed in just hours in New York, Washington and a field in Pennsylvania.cComments

A number of people have pointed out that this Senate report makes no recommendations of what should have been done differently after 9/11 and no recommendations for future interrogations. So, they talk about the problems of getting information, what is their solution? common sense-ican at 2:35 PM December 10, 2014

Add a comment See all comments34

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the outgoing committee chair, acknowledged in releasing the report that intelligence officials had been given a mandate by former Republican President George W. Bush to find those responsible. But she was also unequivocal in her condemnation of the intelligence service.

"Under any common meaning of the term, CIA detainees were tortured," said Feinstein, describing the era as "one of the lowest points in our nation's history."

The report certainly is gruesome, listing waterboarding and other tortures (some Republicans call these "enhanced interrogations") and there was that dungeonlike site in Afghanistan nicknamed the Salt Pit where detainees were badly treated and some died.President Obama vows actions in CIA report won't take place on his watchPresident Obama vows actions in CIA report won't take place on his watchTribune wire reports

Detainees were shackled, sometimes hooded, and "dragged up and down corridors while beings slapped and punched," according to the committee. One Afghan militant, a man named Gul Rahman, died of hypothermia in the pit after he was beaten, stripped naked and left chained to a concrete floor. There were many other details, but the gist of it has been known for years.

Some members of the committee were critical of the release of the report, saying it would incite emotions and put Americans at risk.

"We've known all this stuff for years," Sen. Dan Coats, the Indiana Republican and member of the committee, told me in an interview Tuesday on my WLS-AM radio program. "It's been discussed on every news show, by every newspaper, by so many journalists. But the real question is: Why now?

"Here the White House on the one hand issues out of the State Department a warning to every embassy, every intelligence agency, every intelligence agent, 'All right now, you're suddenly a target now, so take extra caution,' and at the same time , they're saying 'Oh no, this report needs to be released.' It doesn't make sense.

"Why put Americans at risk when everything is already known?" Coats asked. "The program was terminated years ago. … As former ambassador I knew what it was like to be in a building in a foreign country with an American flag hanging outside. … There will be people out there, saying, 'See, I told you so, now I'm justified in going out and killing an American or blowing up a building.'"

If you're certain about all this, if your politics are tribal enough to know the unequivocal truth of things, congratulations.

But I have no such certainty. The debate is of words, and it is compelling, but so was the sound of Daniel Pearl's voice. He was screaming and then he stopped screaming.

There are 16,300 atomic weapons in the hands of nine countries, and a new book by US author Eric Schlosser examines how close the world came to an accidental nuclear detonation during the Cold War

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Vienna (AFP) - When a nuclear bomb landed in the Gregg yard in South Carolina in 1958, it left a big crater, killed a few chickens, caused the family minor injuries and wrecked their Chevrolet.

Luckily, the device that had fallen out of a B-47 bomber after Captain Bruce Kulka accidentally grabbed a lever opening the bomb bay -- almost falling out himself -- was not fully armed with a fissile core.

But other US aircraft routinely flew carrying fully-primed nuclear weapons, and the incident, as highlighted in this week's international conference on nuclear weapons in Vienna, was far from isolated.

"We were lucky to get out of the Cold War without a nuclear detonation," US author Eric Schlosser, who recounts this episode and many others in his recent book "Command and Control", told the gathering.

"The problem with luck is that eventually it runs out," said Schlosser, who spent six years researching his book, sifting through thousands of pages of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information act and interviewing a range of senior figures.

In another case in 1961, a B-52 bomber broke up in the air and went into a spin. The resulting centrifugal forces pulled a lanyard that released a fully operational hydrogen bomb -- a super-powerful nuclear bomb -- over North Carolina.View photos US author Eric Schlosser -- seen here during the Tribeca …US author Eric Schlosser -- seen here during the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, on April 26, 201 …

"There was one switch in that weapon that prevented the full-scale detonation of a hydrogen bomb hundreds of times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb" dropped by the US on Japan on 1945, Schlosser said.

And in 1968, a B-52 bomber carrying four hydrogen bombs crashed near the Thule air base in Greenland.

The conventional explosives surrounding the nuclear core exploded, but a full nuclear explosion was averted, although radioactive plutonium was dispersed in the area and part of one of the bombs was never recovered.

In 1980 Zbigniew Brzezinski, former US national security adviser, was woken up at 2.30 am to be told of 220 -- then corrected to 2,200 -- incoming Russian nuclear missiles.

Brzezinski was about to phone president Jimmy Carter, and US bomber crews had already started their engines, when the all-clear came through. The false alarm was triggered by a faulty microchip costing less than 50 cents.View photos US aircraft like these B-52 bombers routinely carried …US aircraft like these B-52 bombers routinely carried fully-primed nuclear weapons during the Cold W …

- Thing of the past? -

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union 25 years ago, nuclear arsenals have been slashed, and technological advances and security improvements have reduced the chances of an accident.

The US says its missiles are pointed to land in the middle of the ocean. Its combat aircraft no longer routinely have nuclear bombs on board.

But there are believed to remain 16,300 nuclear weapons worldwide in the hands of nine countries, 1,800 of them ready to be launched at short notice, and experts say that major causes for concern persist.

The nuclear warheads themselves may be more modern, but the equipment that carries them -- missiles, aircraft and submarines -- are antiquated, and incidents still happen.View photos Nuclear arsenals are extremely vulnerable to cyber-attacks, …Nuclear arsenals are extremely vulnerable to cyber-attacks, according to experts at Harvard Law Scho …

In France, for example, there have been security breaches at the Isle Longue nuclear submarine base, and in 2009 two British and a French nuclear sub reportedly collided, said Jean-Marie Collin, head of a group representing 20 French MPs calling for disarmament.

Britain's Daily Express reported this week that there have been 44 fires on board Royal Navy submarines in the past four years.

But most worryingly, said Bruce Blair, a former US control officer for nuclear missiles now at Princeton University, the time needed to deploy a nuclear weapons is being cut, putting them on dangerous "hair-trigger readiness".

"Russia has shortened the launch time by automating the firing process. High command posts in the Moscow area need only seconds to directly fire missiles out of silos as far away as Siberia," Blair said.

- Cyber danger -

This in turn increases the risk from another area barely known about in the Cold War -- cyber-attacks, said Camille M. Francois, an expert in the field at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

With their high level of automation, "nuclear assets are by their nature extremely vulnerable to cyber-attack," Francois said.

And in addition, she told AFP, policymakers still have something of a "1980s mentality", focusing on the idea of a lone hacker -- like in the 1983 movie "WarGames" -- and believing that cyber-attacks can only come via the Internet.

"It's not kids anymore, it is states investing very heavily in cyber-warfare. This is the new battlefield, the fifth domain of war," she said.

Former US State Department official Mark Fitzpatrick, now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told AFP that the fact that there has never been a nuclear explosion by accident, mistake or miscalculation "suggests that the weapons custodians take their task seriously".

"On the other hand, I think the world has been very lucky not to have experienced such an occurrence ... The urgency of the issue can be exaggerated, but I would not discount the risks or the devastating consequences of failure."

"Nuclear weapons are the most dangerous weapons ever made," Schlosser told AFP. "This technology has never been under our control since the very beginning."

If anyone has followed the work of the General Secretariat of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and read the report submitted at the GCC summit in Kuwait in 2013, they would be shocked by the difference between reality and what is written on paper.

...

I wish to ask all employees at the Council’s General Secretariat as well as the foreign ministries of each GCC country, hoping they will forgive me for this: What are the achievements you have mentioned in your report presented at the Kuwait Gulf summit in 2013?

You dealt with the subject of UAE islands occupied by Iran and considered that an achievement! You also discussed Iran’s nuclear weapons programme in your concluding remarks; do you really think that it is an accomplishment or is it actually a sacred national duty to strive for your demands to be attained?

European states that took part in the CIA operation were complicit in violating fundamental human rights, the Geneva conventions and the UN convention against torture. None, with the exception of Sweden perhaps, has admitted to any wrongdoing.

Yet the strength of democracies resides precisely in their ability to recognise and debate their mistakes. In authoritarian countries where torture abounds, there is no such thing as public accountability.

As the US embarks on a renewed effort to get to the truth, this could be a good time for Europe to come clean. The bottom line is that fully exposing such practices is the only way to ensure they will never be repeated.

The multi-faceted essence of the Arab-Israeli conflict and Israeli-Palestinian war is territorial, political, ideological, and religious – a convulsive confrontation between the mutually exclusive claims of Judaism and Islam.

But a fifth dimension of the conflict is culture – popular culture – embodied in a code of identity that differentiates one human community from another.

Culture is not negotiable or alterable: it is the texture of the life people live, and the local rhythm of things they know from their earliest memories. It is an inbred code of behavior and, as for all peoples, precedes and precludes morality, thought, and judgment.

The reason why the cultural component of the conflict is ignored stems from the fact that in order to appreciate a culture, you basically have to know it from the inside; and outsiders, non-Arabs, are ignorant of Arab culture, and haughtily assume that it has no value.

Add to this obstacle the fact that a native always behaves differently when he is with a foreigner than with a fellow-native. Surface-like conversations between people from different cultures can reveal very little. To call the Arabs rhetorically flexible is a kind way to infer their masterful command of deception.

It is Arab culture in particular, atavistic and organic, encased in the old binding from its historical origin, which must be addressed in order to better explore the intractability of the long Arab-Israeli rivalry

1

Arab culture is a family-clan-national social reality. An Arab owes absolute and blind loyalty to the group of his birth. He belongs to family and village, as a Bedouin belongs to his tribe. You can’t change your tribe, and you don’t change your family; and no other social framework demands more adhesion than blood relations. It follows from this premise that the Arab mistrusts outsiders. For the Arabs, the Israelis are the ‘others’, suspected of manipulation and treachery, and a permanent adversary and enemy, as taught in the Arabic Koran.

2

For the Arabs, language reflects culture in a way that prevents it being a vehicle for direct and clear communication. Words are used to impress, deflect intentions, disarm interlocutors, confuse listeners, and offer promises never to be fulfilled. The cultural subtext in discussions and negotiations with Arabs is often garnished in polite commitments and even written agreements. But there is little conviction to adhere to the summary accord because the culture code calls for gingerly saying what the other wants to hear; then agreeing to an appointment never to be kept, or promising a phone call that will never come. The Israelis were enthused that the Palestinians moved toward peace in the Oslo Accord, but it was followed by blood and murder, not reconciliation and brotherhood.

For the Arabs, the past defines the present because history is the anchor for all aspects of identity and aspirations. There is a mythological fascination with ancestors – as for the contemporary Salifiyya movement – combined with an axiomatic belief that sees the future as necessarily emerging from and even repeating the glorious Arab past. This contributes to an iron-will and patience until victory is assured. For the Arabs — Israel beware — never forget any perceived ill act against them. The early Islamic days of conquest and caliphate will be renewed, even if the shift in power takes forever.

4

Arab self-consciousness, spared any identity crisis, provides a psychological foundation for imposing the collective will upon others. To be a Muslim and an Arab, as Allah’s chosen people, launches the Arab on a path of self-justification, whose flip-side is to blame the non-Arabs for all Arab misfortunes and failures. Israel is always excoriated for crimes of aggression and violence. The composed Arab never doubts that justice is on his side: he can do no wrong. Thus, all the Arab-Israeli wars since 1948 are blamed on Israel. Considering that self-criticism is an ancient Jewish practice, Arab self-justification creates an imbalanced ethical equation that demoralizes the Jews while radicalizing the Arabs. In short, the Arabs seek victory, not peace.

5

Islamic truth claims, as in Koranic deviations from Biblical narratives, do not require proof or evidence, or even common sense validity. The Arabs are not perturbed by the lack of facts; their discourse is internal and self-enclosed, as reality is in their mind and not in the external objective world. The Arab mind-set inhabits a world of entrenched fantasy or diabolical conspiracy theories. Note the revelatory comment by Anwar Sadat that ‘all life is play-acting’. He was one to know. In 1993 Arafat demonstrated his theatrical adeptness at the Oslo signing ceremony at the White House.

*

It is essential to unlock the Arab culture code, and cease viewing the Middle East through a Western prism that leads only to delusion, disdain, and a host of ill-consequences and dashed hopes.

Dr. Mordechai Nisan writes and lectures on Israel and the Middle East. His most recent book Only Israel West of the River is available at amazon.com and createspace.com.

In the United States the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, known as UHMS, lists approvals for reimbursement for certain diagnoses in hospitals and clinics. The following indications are approved (for reimbursement) uses of hyperbaric oxygen therapy as defined by the UHMS Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Committee:[1][2]

But the former CIA officials said the United States never would have tracked down and killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011 without information acquired in the interrogation program. Their methods also led to the capture of ranking al Qaeda operatives, provided valuable information about the organization and saved thousands of lives by disrupting al Qaeda plots, including one for an attack on the U.S. West Coast that could have been similar to the Sept. 11 attacks...........

Bob, in the future, please don't bother me with your bullshit and sophistry. You are a faux intellectual that doesn't know shit.

You offer up a specific albeit hypothetical situation. I can only assume all the details are there since YOU are the one that constructed it. YOU demand a specific answer from me on what I would or would not do given the situation YOU laid out. I give you my answer and am prepared to defend it.

I then ask YOU for your answer to the same question and you offer up a cacophony of bull. The closest I can gather is that your answer is NO to your own hypothetical. Now, I admit I am not completely sure if your answer is no or not since in the interim you seems to berate me (as well as John McCain and others) for giving the same answer. Though even this is unclear since (even allowing for the fact you are an English major) you overall performance seems merely a hodgepodge designed to avoid specificity and personal commitment.

I think under certain extreme circumstances torture can be justified by the greater good that may be obtained.

That tells us nothing other than you have disassociated yourself from the matter trying to make it palatable in the abstraction. Torture is very personal, both to the torturer and the one doing the torture. It certainly isn’t abstract to them. The real question is, if there is no one else around, no one you can farm it out too, would you be willing to do it YOURSELF. Will YOU carry through on YOUR convictions? The answer, either one, defines you.

I am also fully aware of the slippery slope problem.

Anyone can easily come up with a hundred scenarios in which such a greater good scenario might obtain.

What standard does one use in judging whether to proceed or not?

A suggestion: beyond a reasonable doubt to a moral certainty.

Certainly not: more likely than not.

Which doesn't mean a mistake might not be made.

Read that again. There are so many ‘what ifs’ in those statements you sound like a fucking politician.

“Well, gee, it all depends, but sure mistakes can be made, on the other hand, yada yada yada...”

What courage. What commitment. What hokum.

Go away, boy, you bother me. And take your faux intellectualism and situational ethics with you.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - Bob is a fool who has no self-awareness. In his more lucid moments he can come across as rational but once you start to engage in a discussion with him you quickly end up going down a rabbit hole into craziness. He and Rat are truly two sides of the same coin. In the old days rat could make some sense - Bob never. His range is from a patina of rationality to complete seething racist irrationality.

“Dianne Feinstein wants to get this off her desk,” she argued, pointing out that the Californian Senator would no longer be Chairwoman of the Committee come January, and that the Democrats were likely using the torture report for political reasons.

“The United States of America is awesome,” she continued. “We are awesome. But we’ve had this discussion. We’ve closed the book on it. The reason they want the discussion is not to show how awesome we are. It’s to show us how we’re not awesome. They apologized for something.

“They don’t like this country,” Tantaros added, firmly establishing herself as pro-awesome. “They want us to look bad and all this does is have our enemies laughing at us.”

Do you count yourself amongst the enemies of the United States, Ash?Or are you just speaking for them, projecting your own feelings onto them?

Please, if you are not counting yourself amongst the enemies of the US, please tell us which of those enemies want US to prosecute the miscreants at the CIA. A link or some a searchable quote would be nice.

The Israeli care, Rufus.They have cared about it from the beginning of the civil war in Syria.

Israel would accept al-Qaeda operatives taking power in Syria.“We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.”Even if the other “bad guys” were affiliated with al-Qaeda. “We understand that they are pretty bad guys,” Oren said in the interview.

a lotta kurds would disagree (among others - Iraq was created by a stroke of a pen dontcha know?) but in the near term (like by early summer) I don't think it'll split though these things happen slowly they do go pretty quick when they do...

"A lotta Kurds" got a wake-up call when ISIS blew through them like a wet Kleenex, and would have, but for the grace of god, and the United States of America (mostly, the USA) taken Erbil, or at least a large part of it.

Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson wants to make Russia's premier partner in southwest Asia a NATO partner.Obviously he has missed a Faux News talking point.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Prime Minister Narendra Modi told President Vladimir Putin on Thursday that Russia will remain India's top defence supplier, even though New Delhi's options had improved since the end of the Cold War.

Islamabad: A Pakistani detained at Afghanistan`s infamous Bagram jail, where he was beaten and threatened with dogs, told AFP that a damning US report on the brutal treatment of terror detainees will do nothing to return the five years he lost to the ordeal.

The poll also showed that if new presidential elections were held today between Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh and Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas, Haniyeh would win 53% to 42%. If there were new legislative elections, Hamas would defeat Fatah by a similar margin.

ole b00bie thinks 'giving the people on the ground' the discretion to torture or not - better yet contract it out with a starting pay of 1800 a day to torture and report results and then building that little relationship into a billing of 81 million.

The most common understanding of disagreement, in the private sphere and the public one, is that it represents a failure. A single understanding, a shared understanding, is preferred to a multiplicity of understandings, which is rejected as an epistemologically fallen condition. We begin with many, but we aspire to one: The grip of the holistic fantasy is profound. Disagreement is a kind of fragmentation, but we wish to be made whole. The many factors that are responsible for intellectual disharmony—rhetorical, conceptual, psychological, cultural, political—are regarded pejoratively as impediments that need to be refuted or discarded, as obstacles in the way of a higher arrangement. That higher arrangement is consensus. Who does not prefer consensus to conflict? Is quarrelsomeness not a vice? Surely a quarrel is a kind of conflict, a state of affairs in need of correction. A quarrel demands resolution and reconciliation. To see things differently is to surrender to difference, whereas sameness or similarity of perspective brings us closer and even unites us. The dream of intellectual concord is also a dream of social concord. The abolition of disagreement, when it is not coerced, is a promise of union and peace…

The Jewish tradition—the tradition of the argumentative Jew—is a long and great challenge to the consensualist mentality. It repudiates, sometimes in theory, always in practice, the cult of unanimity. It displays an almost erotic relationship to controversy. (Like all erotic relationships, this one sometimes devolves into decadence, which in the early modern centuries was known as pilpul.) In the Jewish tradition, disagreement is not only real, it is also ideal—at least in the unredeemed world, which is the only world we know…

"It is clear from this recess on the floor that the Republicans don’t have enough votes to pass the CRomnibus," Pelosi wrote. "This increases our leverage to get two offensive provisions of the bill removed: the bank bailout and big money for campaigns provision."

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Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Financial Services Committee and a key architect of the revolt against the omnibus bill, said she launched her own whipping operation and told members not to be intimidated by the White House.

Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan had chosen the lobby of the CIA’s Old Headquarters Building in suburban Northern Virginia -- “Langley” as it’s commonly known -- as the place where he would push back on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s critical report of the CIA’s detention program.

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After 45 minutes, it was all over. Television reporters rushed outside for another first,the chance to record on-camera stand-ups in front of the building's main entrance.

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Also unknowable, will today's unprecedented live news conference open the door for similar events in the future.

Down deep, Quirk-O knows he lost the argument, and he can't stand it, and doesn't know what to do other than get personal, just like Rat-O.

Riiiight.

I lost the argument based on arguments like this...

What standard does one use in judging whether to proceed or not?

A suggestion: beyond a reasonable doubt to a moral certainty.

Certainly not: more likely than not.

Which doesn't mean a mistake might not be made.

Whaaaa?

At first, you being an 'English Major' and all, I assumed it might be Old English or some tract out of Chaucer.

After a while, I went to Google translator and tried to translate it into English from what I thought might be Swedish but it kept coming back "Be afraid, be very afraid."

To me, it actually seems like something you would hear from someone in a cop car video after they had been stopped for weaving all over the road. I felt a little guilty I didn't offer you a field sobriety test or read you your rights.

I reread that jumble 3 or 4 times and came away not having a clue as to what you were trying to say.

Right, Bob, you're a genius. I mean four lines and saying zip. Quite an achievement.

Back during the 2012 election, when Republicans like Newt Gingrich were busy assailing President Barack Obama over high gas prices and promising to open up America’s coasts to offshore oil rigs galore, the liberal response was mostly dismissive. It was impossible, many argued, for the United States to drill its way to lower gas prices.Jordan Weissmann Jordan Weissmann

Jordan Weissmann is Slate's senior business and economics correspondent.

"[P]roduction in the United States really does not matter much for the price of gas," wrote Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who said that the U.S. could increase its output by a third without meaningfully reducing fuel prices. "Oil prices in the United States depend on the world market, not just supply and demand in the United States.” Advertisement

“If increasing oil drilling lowered gas prices, we’d know it already,” explained Michael Conathan, director of ocean policy at the Center for American Progress. The U.S. had already massively increased oil production, he pointed out, but it hadn’t brought down the cost of fuel. How come? Among other things, other countries had decreased their output to keep prices up.

It wasn’t even just liberals. When ThinkProgress compiled a list of “20 Experts Who Say Drilling Won’t Lower Gas Prices,” it included names like former John McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Fox News’ John Stossel.

These were not absurd or especially ideological arguments. There had never been much of a statistical relationship between U.S. oil production and what Americans paid at the pump. But with crude prices crashing, gas down to about $3 a gallon, and the International Energy Agency declaring that we have reached “a new chapter in the history of the oil markets,” it is time to acknowledge that the left in some respects was wrong and that drilling in North Dakota, Texas, and beyond has actually helped cut the price of gas.

Drilling didn’t do the trick alone, mind you. There are essentially three reasons that crude prices have fallen by about 30 percent since June: Supply, demand, and Saudi Arabia. Thanks largely to surging U.S. production, the amount of oil on the market is up. But thanks to China’s slowdown, Europe’s chronic economic troubles, and American conservation, demand hasn’t kept pace. The upshot: The world enjoyed 2.2 million barrels a day of surplus crude during September and October, more than all of the oil pumped out of the earth in Qatar or in Norway. (Worth noting: U.S. production alone is up 2.4 million barrels per day over the past three years.)

The combination of U.S. drilling and a global slowdown didn’t necessarily have to end in plummeting oil prices. Traditionally, OPEC members have cut their production in the face of global gluts in order to keep their profits high. But now, OPEC appears to be fraying. Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia shocked much of the world by cutting its crude export prices to the U.S., in what was interpreted as an attempt to protect its market share and possibly put pressure on America’s domestic drillers. Instead of trying to buoy the price of petroleum, the Saudis are now helping drive it down further in order to save their own revenue stream.

The kingdom’s move was unexpected. But at least some analysts foresaw the possibility that something like it might happen. “Big-enough gains in global oil production could spark a battle among OPEC members and other big producers for market share, leading to a crash in world prices,” Council on Foreign Relations fellow Michael Levi wrote in his 2013 book The Power Surge. The International Monetary Fund, he noted, had already estimated that a 5 percent increase in global supply of oil (about equivalent to 5 million barrels a day at the time) could drop prices by as much as 50 percent, since small shortages or gluts can have extremely large impact on the market. In other words, the idea that additional drilling could bring down the cost of crude, and with it the price of gasoline, should never have been considered absurd.

This isn’t to say that pumping more crude is a permanent solution to high energy prices. We’ve now entered that new world of oil abundance, and as the IEA argued in a report last week, there are no signs that that the world will be short on hydrocarbons any time soon. But as China and India continue to grow and Europe (hopefully) shakes out of its economic daze, supplies could eventually get tight again.

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Alright, here's what's happened in the oil and gas world: 1) NYMEX We did a pretty big oily transaction in June of 2013, and I'm looking at the WTI price curve we used to predict the price of oil going... More...

-Benton Love

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It’s also not to say that the GOP was right about oil in 2012. In fact, the past few years seem to have proven them dead wrong. Republican politicians have desperately wanted to open up more of America’s shoreline for drilling, as well as parts of Alaska that are off-limits. Aside from the fact that none of those offshore sites would have yielded oil for years, none of that was necessary to bring down prices, which, if they were to fall much further, might endanger U.S. production by making expensive shale plays unprofitable.

In short, the left might have flubbed the oil issue back in 2012. But so did the right.

When the long-lost grail of bipartisan compromise finally re-emerged on Capitol Hill this week, the spending bill for 2015 turned out to be weighted with some of the most devious and damaging provisions imaginable for good government. Written in secrecy and presented as the take-it-or-leave-it alternative to a government shutdown, it includes two regressive “riders” aimed at warming the big-money hearts of donors who leave Congress increasingly vulnerable to special-interest corruption.

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The Internal Revenue Service, another conservative bête noire, would take one of the harshest cuts, $345.6 million, weakening auditing and taxation. The Fish and Wildlife Service would be banned from adding the greater sage grouse to the endangered species list — a victory for the gas and oil industry, which covets even more of America’s threatened Western landscapes than it already has access to.

American coal giant Peabody Energy Corporation walked away with “CEO of the Year” and “Energy Company of the Year,” two of 18 honors bestowed Thursday at the 2014 Platts Global Energy Awards, an annual program now in its 16th year recognizing exemplary leadership, innovation, stewardship and performance. Peabody’s dual win reflected its global leadership and growth and was deemed by program judges to be “best in class.”

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For the 2014 “Lifetime Achievement” recognition, judges settled on two individuals from a list of seven finalists:

Jean-François Conil-Lacoste, chairman of the management board of the European Power Exchange EPEX SPOT – a Paris-based European day-ahead and intra-day power exchange network – was lauded for his career-long pursuit of developing a reliable and transparent pan-European power market. After a decade of commodity trading, Conil-Lacoste took leadership positions at Euronext and Powernext exchanges before launching a system for connecting neighboring power markets, known as market coupling, in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, U.K. and the Iberian Peninsula.

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William K. Reilly, former administrator of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), was honored for an “impressive” career in conservation and environmental policy development, with judges noting Reilly is “respected by environmental advocates and energy industry insiders alike.” The Decatur, Illinois, native is credited with a series of EPA “firsts” during his tenure from 1989-1993, including acid rain amendments to the Clean Air Act in 1990.

Once again the Democrats and the Obama Administration are throwing the CIA under the bus, while Senator Dianne Feinstein is on a personal witch-hunt. With the release of the Democrats’ report on the CIA enhanced interrogation program, they seem to enjoy playing partisan politics instead of trying to keep Americans safe. Their most outrageous conclusions were that CIA officials allegedly deceived their superiors at the White House, members of Congress and even sometimes their own peers about the interrogation program, as well as that no actionable intelligence was gained. American Thinker interviewed former CIA officials to get their side of the story.

It is obvious that the mainstream media is biased, labeling it as “The Torture Report.” In looking at just the headlines the condemnation becomes obvious: “CIA Report Details Brutality, Dishonesty,” “Torture Was Ineffective,” “Ugly Truth,” “CIA Misled Public On Torture,” and “CIA Abuses A Stain On Our Values.” Unfortunately it seems that all these media outlets forgot one important point, that during the Bush administration there was not an attack on the US homeland and its embassies.

Jose Rodriquez Jr., the former Director of the CIA's National Clandestine Service, told American Thinker, that the enhanced interrogation techniques included sleep deprivation, stress techniques, facial holds, insult slaps with an open hand, and waterboarding of three terrorists. “Our objective was not to inflict pain, but to instill a sense of hopelessness and despair. It is more about psychological manipulation than anything else. After being captured, the terrorists eventually will conclude that they have no control over their situation and we are the ones who control their fate. You may be surprised, but I agree with those people who say torture does not work. That is because our program was not torture and it did work. We made sure that we vetted information. Everything was based on legality, a training manual, strict procedures, and guidelines. The bottom line is that the program was very well managed and what was written in the Democratic report is widely exaggerated or never happened.”

All those interviewed regard the Democrats as being highly hypocritical. They push back that in the wake of the 9/11 attacks Congress urged the CIA to do everything possible to prevent another attack, debilitate, and destroy al-Qaeda. Congress was briefed throughout, a number of times. Either members of Congress are lying to the American people or they have selective memories while now taking the moral high ground. For example, Democratic Senator John D. Rockefeller, a high ranking member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in March 2003 about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed being turned over to a third country that permits torture, “But I wouldn’t rule it out. I wouldn’t take anything off the table where he is concerned, because this is the man who has killed hundreds and hundreds of Americans over the last ten years.” Then there is the famous Nancy Pelosi news conference where she said she was never briefed; yet there are detailed documents supporting the CIA’s position that members of Congress knew about and were briefed continuously on the enhanced interrogation methods.

President Obama also weighs in on the moral issue, recently stating, “The report documents a troubling program involving enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects in secret facilities outside the United States, and it reinforces my long-held view that these harsh methods were not only inconsistent with our values as a nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests.” Yet, he has authorized the outright killing of a number of terrorists with drones, including Americans who have not been given due process.

Rodriguez Jr. noted, “It is highly irresponsible for the President of the US to say we tortured some folks. He says it’s against our values, but does not seem to have a problem killing people. I don't understand how this administration and most of the media do not see the contradiction that exists between basically killing and capture, even though some have been subjected to intense interrogation techniques. I will never understand that one. Worse yet, dead men don't talk. Interrogation is a key tool in protecting this country. You never know what crisis is going to come up for which we will need to interrogate again. Giving it up unilaterally in such a political way does damage to our country. This administration does not capture people and take prisoners.”

A former operative wonders if the Commander-In-Chief understands the training process those in the military must endure. The waterboarding and other techniques were based on the training of the SEALs, Air Force pilots, and Special Forces. He noted, “The CIA got it right, and it was an incredible accomplishment. It led to the capture of senior al Qaeda operatives, thereby removing them from the battlefield. Anytime you are putting a human being under duress it is nasty. Even non-physical interrogation is not a pretty thing to watch. You have to understand that he (the operative) is attempting to get someone to give up something he doesn’t want to give up to save American lives.”

Regarding the claims the EIT program did not prevent any future attacks those interviewed explicitly say ‘not true.’ They refer to the quotes of President Obama’s CIA directors. Leon Panetta stated in his book, “The CIA got important, even critical intelligence from individuals subjected to these enhanced interrogation techniques.”

John Brennan who was a senior officer at the agency at the time of the EIT program and is the current CIA Director commented in the CIA response, “The program did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives. Yet, despite common ground with some of the findings of the Committee’s Study, we part ways with the Committee on some key points. Our review indicates that interrogations of detainees on whom EITs were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives. The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of al-Qaida and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day.”

Rodriguez Jr. told American Thinker that everyone felt there was a ticking time bomb that could be heard but not seen. To prevent a second wave of attacks the detention and interrogation program was formulated. There were reports that bin Laden had met with Pakistani nuclear scientists, there were attempts to smuggle nuclear weapons into New York City, and al Qaeda was trying to manufacture anthrax. “This program led to the disruption of terrorist plots that saved American lives. It contributed to helping us learn more about al Qaeda including the best way on how to attack, thwart, and degrade it. Information provided by Zubaydah through the interrogation program led to the capture in 2002 of KSM associate and post-9/11 plotter Ramzi Bin al-Shibh. Information from both Zubaydah and al-Shibh led us to KSM. KSM then led us to Riduan Isamuddin, aka Hambali, East Asia’s chief al Qaeda ally and the perpetrator of the 2002 Bali bombing in Indonesia, in which more than 200 people perished.”

He also responded to those critics who said that all the CIA had to do was release the videotapes to prove their points, but that is no longer possible since the tapes were destroyed. “People under my command and their families were at risk once their faces would have been shown. Make no mistake those tapes would have been made public. No one is reporting that there is a written record of what was on the tapes, a documentation from the lawyers who reviewed the tapes before they were destroyed.”

The other finding by this Democratic report is that the CIA systematically and intentionally misled each of these audiences on the effectiveness of the program. The media is reporting that Michael Hayden, when he was CIA Director, misinformed Congress regarding the number of detainees. It appears that it was not Hayden doing the misleading but the Democrats on the committee who formulated the report. It is very interesting how they never spoke to anyone who ran the program or was in charge of the CIA, having cherry picked the information. Hayden noted, “Maybe if the committee had talked to real people and accessed their notes we wouldn’t have to have this conversation. This is an example of committee methodology. Take a stray ‘fact’ and claim its meaning to fit the desired narrative, creating a mass deception.” Do Americans even care if the amount of terrorists detained was the number supposedly reported by Hayden, 100, or the committee’s number of 119? What does it matter considering they were high value targets that should never be released?

Ultimately, Americans should thank those at the CIA, and hope that the final outcome of this report is not going to create an agency that is timid and risk-averse. These men and women who serve in the intelligence agency never get the heroic welcome or thanks they so rightly deserve for the risks they take. Their names will never be known and they will never receive the public gratitude so many others get. The Democrats and mainstream media need to understand that most Americans feel making terrorists uncomfortable is worth the price of saving American lives. As Jose Rodriguez Jr. summarized, “We need to protect our intelligence organizations, mentor them, and support them. I hope Americans will see the facts by going to our website, http://www.ciasaveslives.com/. I have no regrets. I feel honored I was able to serve my country and had the ability to help keep Americans safe.”

The author writes for American Thinker. She has done book reviews, author interviews, and has written a number of national security, political, and foreign policy articles.

There is no point in putting up the other side of this story again. It's been put up here at least a dozen times before.

I would only point out that that same damn Kenyan, Communist American Hater is the same guy who brow beat enough of his own party faithful to pass a budget that included provisions to gut Dodd-Frank and allow banks to again begin dealing in the risky derivative products that were a root cause for the miasma created in 2008.

Same was true when GW Bush, during his time as the figurehead.The election of 2014, with the election of the GOP maority, the earth was supposed to have shifted ...But the reality ...

Congressional leaders unveiled a massive $1.01 trillion spending bill Tuesday night that will keep most of the federal government funded through September.

The legislation is expected to pass in the coming days and will allow the incoming Republican-controlled Congress to clear the decks of lingering spending issues while setting the stage for a prolonged fight with President Obama over immigration policy.

At 1,603 pages, the bill includes at least $1.2 billion for agencies to deal with the influx of unaccompanied immigrant children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. There’s also money to fight the rise of the Islamic State and $5.4 billion to fight the threat of Ebola. But there are also significant changes to campaign finance laws and potential cuts to retiree pension plans. ...John Thune (S.D.), the third-ranking Republican senator, joked that last-minute drama with the spending plan “is a Christmas tradition.” But, he added, “I don’t see it getting derailed. I think it could get slowed down, but I think it will ultimately get across the finish line.”

While waiting for John McCain to come on O'Reilly, I saw the skit right before that interview in which she was involved. She went off on one of her scatterbrained right wing rants and O'Reilly, even Bill O,Reilly , had to rein her in and tell her to shut up.

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.